Long Live The Queen
by i love alex
Summary: Starting off in 2x06 just after Elena has given Stefan her blood at the well.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This fic is sort of three ideas rolled into one because each separately just wasn't working so I decided to shove them all together. It starts off in 2x06 just after Elena has given Stefan her blood at the well and other than Jenna being stabbed, the fic doesn't follow what happens in the show.

Angst heavy. Blood heavy. Comfort heavy:

* * *

It doesn't take very long for her blood to heal him. The scars on his face are fading within minutes and he's soon standing, resting against the granite of the well's base with her hand at his back to steady him.

Elena nods at Bonnie and at Caroline the okay to leave, the former looking as though she was close to passing out. Caroline needs to practically tug at Bonnie's hand but she turns her head over her shoulder and looks back at them until Elena can no longer make out her furrowed expression between the trees.

"Are you okay?"

She wasn't going to pretend that it hadn't scared her. Seeing him like that. It had scared her to death. There was the fear of an external force, that Katherine could hurt him or Mason. The fears of something internal had never really entered her mind. Or really, she didn't have the energy, the emotional capacity to let them.

He nods, staring down into the water, his face grimacing, "I should've known it wasn't going to be so easy, he didn't trust Katherine as much as he didn't trust me and Damon."

She shakes her head a little, fighting the images of his scarred face away from her mind, "We've got the stone now…so dealing with Katherine, it doesn't have to be as big of a problem. We have something against her." She says faintly.

They were still soaking wet but it's not the reason for why her voice was getting breathless, why her hands have begun to shake and why she can't keep her jaw from quivering. He just looks at her for a moment then wordlessly pulls her into his arms.

"I'm sorry you had to see that." He breathes and she shakes her head but grips to him tighter.

"I need to get back to the house. If I can stop Damon…" He doesn't finish but he doesn't really need to and she nods and he keeps one arm around her waist while he moves for the small brown box a little out of reach.

"Come on, let's get you home." He kisses her temple softly and she hates how it takes her almost a minute to be able to move.

Finding the moonstone didn't feel like a win. It felt more like a loss.

* * *

She's always hated hospitals. The smell, the noise. The lighting. It was just one tiny room of depression after another and she hated it.

Jeremy's tapping his foot restlessly beside her, slumped over with his head to the floor. She doesn't know whether he's crying or not.

Their home had become yet another police crime scene; blood pooled on the kitchen floor, dripping down the island in the middle. Officers demanding questions, taking the lies on return easily.

She doesn't remember getting good at it. Lying.

There are pins and needles in her feet and she gets up from the chair she's wedged herself into and starts to pace the waiting room, back and forth, hearing her heartbeat roaring in her ear, muttering, 'Please don't take her away, please please please' repetitively under her breath.

She wouldn't be able to handle it; Jeremy would fall apart. She would fall apart. They couldn't survive another death in their family. Death at the hands of a vampire.

Elena shivers, stopping, a little dizzy and she leans against the window that looked out onto the river. Anger rested in her body, sat there simmering. Katherine had done this to her. To them. Katherine was the reason for her life to become what it was. Katherine was…

"Elena?"

His voice doesn't register in her mind until he's standing behind her, his hands extending momentarily from his body, like he's not sure what to do with them. Hug her or wrap them around himself.

"Any news?"

She's good at reading people. What they're hiding, feeling. Excellent in fact but she can't read his and it's so frustrating, the way he hesitates and looks to the floor that she almost yells out the, "Alaric? Any news?"

From the corner of her eye she can just see Jeremy, lifting his head, his face blotchy, covered in tears.

But Alaric is just shaking his head, biting his bottom lip that suddenly can't stop quivering and Elena doesn't almost hear it; his words breaking right out of him.

"She…she didn't make it, Elena. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

* * *

She doesn't get out of bed for three days. Stefan doesn't move out of the chair beside it for two but she hasn't spoken a word to anyone and that terrifies him more than the fact that she wasn't eating properly, that she hadn't cried.

He knows grief. How it can hit you unexpectedly, that it sometimes didn't have explanations for the way you cried for days, lied against the floor for a week; the helplessness at not being able to make it stop. But watching it in her. Watching it in someone you loved. That was a little beyond explanations; that type of grief.

"Please." He whispers when he's lying beside her one night, when the house was at it's quietest; it's numbest, "Please say something."

But she continues to stare at him, through him and she has tears in her eyes that don't fall.

He shuts his own eyes and immediately hears it; her soft, low moan. A guttural sound deep from her throat that breaks his heart but when he opens them again, she's turning and facing the other way.

After two days of this, he's so desperate that he asks Damon to try.

He waits outside the door, sitting on the floor and hangs his head between his knees. He's learnt how to block out noises he doesn't want to hear and he's so exhausted, emotionally and mentally…physically that the whole 30 minutes they're in there together, he hears absolutely none of it.

"She's asleep."

Damon comes through the other bathroom door; the one that leads out into the hall and Stefan lifts his head and levels his eyes onto his brother's face, reading it.

"I couldn't." Is all he says and he looks defeated, like he can barely keep his face from falling right apart and Stefan just nods weakly before standing back onto his feet.

"She needs help…Stefan."

His back is to his brother, holding her bedroom door handle and it's because Damon can't see him, that he lets himself, just for a second, fall against that. Tighten his face against the ache in his heart and swallow down the lump in his throat and as he turns back to his brother, his eyes are filled with tears and it's a testament to the situation that Damon makes no response to that.

"I know." Stefan whispers and opens and closes the door, leaving his brother still standing out in the hall.

* * *

A/N: Chapter 2 up a little later.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: This fic will be on hold for a little while as I'm going away for two weeks and will not have access to the internet, or my computer. My apologies but until I get back:

* * *

After the fourth day, she comes downstairs.

The 6 of them: Caroline, Bonnie, Matt, Alaric, Stefan and Damon (Jeremy won't leave his room) are sitting in the living room. She hears their low murmurs stop suddenly once Caroline sees her and gasps.

She doesn't know what time it is, has lost track of it but it was dark outside, had been for a while, so she guesses it's late.

Stefan moves first, from where's half leaning, half standing near the archway.

"Honey, what are you doing?" He asks softly.

She hasn't looked in the mirror; hasn't showered or hardly eaten so she knows how she looks. Gaunt, frail, depressed. In mourning. But she can feel the eyes studying her, gazing at the fragility and it does nothing but fuel this anger, embedded within her.

"What are _you_ doing?" She spits back, shoving her arms over her chest; she has no strength left in her body and hides the way she can't stand straight by leaning against the banister.

Stefan looks over at his brother for a moment, disheartened and hesitates, looking back at her.

"We're just talking….talking about you. We're all worried, Elena."

They all look towards Bonnie, who's now standing up from her chair and she wrings her hands together and steps around the coffee table and around the couch.

"We're really worried."

Elena only glares. "Well that's really sweet of you but you can all leave because I'm fine. I'm absolutely fine."

"Come on Elena, you're not…"

"What?" She yells suddenly, hysterical, looking towards Damon, "I'm not what Damon? I'm not fine because you killed Mason? You tortured and killed somebody and it pissed off your ex-girlfriend? I'm not fine because she killed Jenna…I'm not fine, really? Then tell me Damon…you tell me what I'm supposed to be. Numb, like you?"

It's silent for almost a full minute, all but the sound of Elena's rough breathing. Nobody else seems willing enough to move; to say something but Damon looks up at her like he hasn't heard any of it.

"You're not numb…you're a walking corpse."

Elena's eyes tighten and she shudders, looks through him like she's never seen him before, "You get out of my house." She shouts, pointing to the doorway.

"Elena…" Stefan tries but Elena looks over to him, gritting her teeth together, "OUT, GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, ALL OF YOU, GET OUT." She breaks into sobs, clutching the banister.

Stefan takes the stairs two at a time as she begins to wail, the rest of them staring up at her; Caroline was crying and Damon, whose hand at been on the door handle, looked like he was torn between staying and getting the hell out of there.

"Elena…" Stefan says softly and she shakes her head and sobs harder, pointing at Damon, "Get out of my house, you killed her. You_ killed_ her."

Stefan manages to get one arm around her shoulder and the other around her waist as she falls to the steps and tries to push him away but he only tightens his hold on her.

"Stefan…" Alaric tries but Stefan shakes his head and the door slams as Damon leaves.

"I've got her."

"She's dead." Elena sobs into his neck, her fingers gripping to his shirt.

"Shh, it's okay, it's okay." He breathes against her hair.

"Stefan…"

"I said I've got her." Stefan yells and lifts Elena up. He can feel her tears, smearing across his neck, dropping down his skin and clinging onto whatever piece of strength he has left, the strength for her, her cries almost breaking what's left of it, he carries her up the stairs.

* * *

"Stefan."

He had sat her in the bathtub after bringing her back into her room. It's a small struggle to get her clothes off but they're soon in a heap on the floor and he's turning the faucets on and sitting with his legs over the ledge for her body to lean against.

She's still crying, even as he lifts her head back to wash out the shampoo but she reaches for his hand and kisses the palm of it and he knows, his chest aching, it's her thank you.

She had been asleep for almost six hours now as he read resting against her alcove, when he hears her voice again, the sound going through him like a warm familiar ache.

"Elena?"

She flicks her eyes around the room, a little disoriented but settles them on his face as he comes against the bed and trails his hand down her cheek, "Hi."

She doesn't say anything but leans into his touch and he takes that as a sign that it was okay for him to move closer though close right now, is hardly enough.

"Where are you?" He whispers, his eyes a swirl of colors and memories that she remembers but can't quite grasp on to.

"Here." And she slides one of her legs in between his, wielding herself against him, pressing a hand to his chest.

* * *

It's déjà. The exact same people. The exact same location. The same stale food.

But it's harder, this time. Without the aid of her Aunt, swooping in to rescue her from the plethora of relatives, some she hadn't even heard of, to eat a bowl of ice cream in her bedroom and complain about the dresses at some Award show that just happened to be on at the time. Both of them forgetting, for just a second, the reality they were now in; that the house currently filled was suddenly short of two people.

The wake starts just around noon, a little after the funeral down at the reserve and Elena walks around the entire time in a trance. Smiling when she has to smile. Shake hands when they're there to be shook, knowing that without him at her side, his hand at her back, she wouldn't be able to do any of it.

But she soon needs to just lean against him, in order for her to keep walking even though the house was still crawling with people. People she was obliged to talk to, her brother still absent.

"I'm going to get you some water, I'll be right back." They're hovering in the shell of her father's study for some privacy, for just a moment of quiet. She nods and doesn't drop his hand until she reaches his fingers as he turned the corner. She doesn't know how she's ever going to thank him for being so wonderful, for being her strength.

She's thinking of what Jenna had whispered in her ear that day, lifting a picture of her parents off the desk when she looks up through the window and see's it.

A reflection too eerily like herself.

_You're stronger than you think, Elena._

The picture frame drops, hits the table and breaks into pieces that scatter across the desk but all Elena can see. Can now hear. Can now think of is the sound Jenna had made as the knife had punctured her skin.

The reflection staring back at her begins to smirk.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: I'm back! Thanks for being so patient and for the positive response to the story, here's the next chapter:

* * *

How nobody stops her (there were less than 100 people in her house, 3 of them vampires) or sees her leave through the front door is a miracle. But she's in her car in a matter of seconds, the tires squealing as they ripped out of the driveway and moved towards Katherine, now dancing like a shadow through the streets. It had snowed the night before leaving them icy and dangerous.

She gives Elena half a step to catch up before rushing ahead, disappearing for feet at a time. She's driving across rickety bridge when Katherine stops again suddenly, swinging herself around the poles that connected the bridge together.

Elena can hear her high pitched giggle as she turns the car off and yanks open the door; it was freezing outside and she was only wearing her thin funeral dress and stockings.

"Poor wittle, Elena. Everybody has to die on you don't they?" Katherine whines in a faux babyish squeal, now jumping off the ledge of the bridge.

Adrenaline and a rage she had never felt before, undermine her and any rational thought in her head. That she didn't know how to kill a vampire. That she was even thinking about trying and she takes a step forward towards Katherine, her hands stuffed into fists.

"You don't have that problem do you? People dying on you. You either kill them or they get slaughtered before you can try."

It happens so fast, she hasn't even taken her next breath of air as Katherine comes forward and hits the side of her face, knocking her against the door and to the ground.

"How'd you get away, you're minders turn the other cheek for a small second?"

Her lip was bleeding and she felt dizzy, the base of her skull beginning to ache but she manages to pull herself up onto her feet again, gritting her teeth together.

"I don't like when I don't get my way, Elena. You should know that by now." Katherine sings, following the zigzag pattern of the road with her feet.

"And what is your way? You can't compel Stefan to love you anymore and Damon's clearly moved on."

This time she expects the hit but it hurts more, her head being knocked so hard it hits and breaks the glass of the rearview mirror. She stays huddled on the ground, breathing shakily. She knows she doesn't have long, Katherine's patience wearing thin. Her forehead was now definitely bleeding and her hand felt sprained.

"Stub-_born_, takes you a little bit doesn't it?" Katherine clicks her tongue and spins on one foot.

Elena groans and slides one arm over her stomach, kneeling first on her knees and then stumbling up to her feet.

"It worked pretty perfectly, really. This whole little plan to draw you out, away from anyone else, and kill Jeremy, all alone in his room."

"You didn't." Elena spits, her heart pounding so loud it echoed painfully in her ear. She knows; she just knows she didn't but it doesn't stop the worry pooling inside her, kick what is only her next decision into motion.

She's able to get around to the side door before Katherine's against her, just barely, sliding up against her ear, "Delicious." She grins and Elena shivers, feels like she might vomit as Katherine peels away. Elena slams the door shut.

The car starts, her hands shaking, her knuckles bruised. She can barely hold the stirring wheel with both hands, her right arm searing with pain but she manages to turn it around, revving the engine and speeding back over the bridge.

Katherine begins her chase, at either side of the car, making navigating close to impossible and Elena takes a turn too sharply, and it's inevitable, with Katherine's smile so blinding, the ice forcing the car to skid, quickly flipping right over, smacking into Katherine before coming against a tree.

There was glass in her mouth and her arm was bent at an odd angle but she wriggled her way out of the drivers seat, cutting her leg on the broken window. Being still wasn't an option.

She crawled with all her weight, on all fours. The skin of her knees and her hands grazing against the gravel but she was numb to the pain, moving towards the center of the road.

Katherine's body was bent at such an odd angle, both shoulders and her leg looked dislocated.

But she was laughing, hysterically laughing. Blood caked around her mouth and it was only then, coming up above her, that Elena notices the fallen tree branch, sticking out of the side of her stomach, blood gushing at the entry.

It's a split second moment as Elena reaches for the branch and pulls it out, gripping to it tightly and hovering it over Katherine's chest.

"Long…live the…_Queen_." Katherine drawls breathlessly, her face a crooked smile and Elena shoves the branch into her stomach, driving it right through, scraping the bark along her palm, ripping skin until Katherine's smile fades to only shrivelled ash.

Her hand releases it's grip, no longer having the strength and she closes her eyes, because her brain tells her that the spinning will spot, the aching at her skull with ease, if she does.

The last thing she remembers smelling is blood.

* * *

A/N: Next chapter up tomorrow!


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Horrid of me to leave you where I did:

* * *

Stefan pushes open Jeremy's door a crack to find him slumped in an armchair staring out the window. Bonnie had grabbed him on the way to the kitchen and had whispered into his ear that Jeremy was asking for him.

He tells Bonnie to look after Elena, to get her some water and starts up the stairs. Jeremy hadn't left his bedroom in over a week, only really talking to Bonnie who somehow managed to slide her way in through the crack of Jeremy's doorway whenever he opened it wide enough to let her in.

"Jer?" He asks quietly and pushes the door open further. He shuts it, coming into the room when he doesn't get a response and sits down on a chair, furthest from the window.

"Is she doing okay?" Jeremy asks quietly.

Stefan sighs and clumps his hands together as Jeremy looks towards him.

"No," He starts carefully, knowing that the only reason Jeremy had asked him up here was because he knew he'd be the one most honest with him, the only one could give him the truth, "She's not. She's grieving and she's angry and she's hurt."

Jeremy nods a little to all of this and rubs his eyes, "I didn't mean to pull myself away from her but I just…couldn't." His voice breaks and he looks away from Stefan and back out the window.

"I know that, man and she knows that. She's been worried about you, she hasn't said anything directly but I can tell. When she thinks I'm asleep, she'll come in here to just…be with you."

Jeremy clumps a hand over his mouth and clenches his eyes shut and Stefan walks the short distance between them and places his hand at his back, squeezing his shoulder.

"You are stronger than you think, Jeremy."

And Jeremy manages to smile, tears running over his lips, "I know."

* * *

"Where's Stefan?"

Sheriff Forbes grabs the back of Damon's shirt, her face pale and Damon, a little taken aback, almost chokes on the scotch he still has left in his mouth.

"Answer me Damon, where is he is?" She says more urgently and flicks her eyes haphazardly around the dining room.

He could make out his brother's voice out of hundreds and he finds it in the house, filled with strangers, quickly.

"He's with, Jeremy, up in his room. You know the boy has taken the death pretty hard."

Liz, if possible, goes even whiter and she brings a hand to her mouth, her finger quiver across her lips.

Damon sets down his glass and puts both his hands on her elbows, "Liz, what is it, what's happened?"

She takes her hand away and takes a moment to compose herself, "I don't want to cause a panic but I need you to come with me to the hospital."

Damon quickly nods and follows the Sheriff who's already out the doorway.

He waits to ask her, waits until they're halfway there, waits until he can just make out the neon glow of the hospital.

"Who is it, Liz?"

And Liz suddenly looks close to tears and Damon's heart immediately picks up in his chest.

"It's Elena Gilbert."

* * *

Bonnie, somehow, get's there first. She's hysterically pleading with the on call nurse, demanding to be told what room number Elena was in when Damon appears behind her, muttering something under his breath to the nurse who just nods and he drags her through the emergency doors.

"How did you find out?" He's still holding onto her arm and his eyes flare out a little even though he's not even looking at her but they don't focus too long on anything else in the room.

"Caroline's mom told Caroline, she's parking her car, we're her best friends, Damon. Nobody else knows though."

Damon nods and moves away from her, walking quickly down the hall. Bonnie needs to jog to keep up.

"Damon, _Damon!_ Tell me, what is it, what's happened, is she going to be okay?" She just reaches his elbow, pulling him back.

Damon suddenly stops and spins her around, pinning her to the wall, the end of the corridor darkest where they were but she's just able to make out the shadow of Damon's eyes, wide and erratic.

"She was in a car accident, she's in surgery now but she lost a lot of blood. A lot. And my blood isn't curing her and I'm in the middle of filling out paperwork and forms and arguing with doctors who want to drill through her skull because apparently if they don't, she'll bleed out completely, so no Bonnie, she's not going to be okay."

Bonnie sags a little against the wall and it's impossible to control the way her breathing suddenly comes out in clumps as Damon moves away from her, continuing down the hallway.

But he stops and turns just as she's managed to move again, clutching one hand over her chest.

"Somebody needs to get Stefan, he's not picking up his phone and I can't leave."

She wonders, for a moment as she stares at him, at how impossibly old he suddenly looked, what it must feel like. That overriding need to protect your loved one from something you knew would not only hurt but destroy them.

Damon's face softens, his eyes pleading with hers and it goes unsaid, his silent _because I can't do that to him_, "Please Bonnie, go get my brother."

Bonnie just nods and turns. Like breathing, she thinks. It must feel like breathing.

* * *

She's out of surgery, a plethora of cords and tubes pouring and sticking out of her body and lying there, on the gurney completely alone when Stefan gets to the hospital.

He pushes past people and through the emergency doors like he's moving through nothing but air and his face is falling, creasing with each step.

"No, no, no, no, no…" He pants, his voice hitching, rounding the corner of her room. He stops, just getting to the door, his voice rising, "No, no, no."

Spotting her through the small window, the sobs getting caught in his throat, he pushes open the door and stumbles over to her bed, falling against her feet.

"No, Elena, no, don't do this to me, please don't to this to me, please, please please." He sobs and the monitors continued to beep, the room dark as he wept over her.

* * *

He gets kicked out as they prepare her for another surgery and even though talking right now is as hard as being able to stand straight, he demands to be filled in, lying about being her husband to solve privacy laws and he crumples under the weight of medical terms that they throw at him, terms he should know but suddenly can't remember. They were cutting into her brain. Cutting through skin and into her brain, that's all he knows.

Damon finds him, two hours later after filling out a police report with Bonnie beside him, asking about rights of the family, and resuscitation laws and he blocks out all of it because he couldn't handle listening to that right now but they round the corner, immediately freezing when they spot him and it's worse, so much worse than either of them could've been prepared for.

His back is hunched against the wall, his knees bent like he can barely keep himself upright and his eyes are glued to the floor.

Damon is beside him before Bonnie can blink again and she folds and rounds the corner, needing to sit down because her best friend needed her but this, this feels too private for anybody to witness.

"Stefan." He speaks against his throat, burning suddenly.

Stefan barely shakes his head. There were tears on his face, pooled in his eyes, on the floor.

"She isn't…she can't breathe…she isn't breathing on her own."

"Stefan." His brother starts and Stefan's face breaks, crumples and Damon catches him just as he begins to fall.

"I _can't_." He sobs, gripping to Damon's shirt.

And Damon holds his brother up right for what is only the first time in their lives.

* * *

A/N: Just a side note, if you want something written from either 2x14 or 2x15 whether it be something we didn't get to see (um the lack of sex anyone?) or something we did see but you want extended please let me know, I'm itching to do something related to either.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Completely abandoned this fic, I apologise but it's not finished yet; it's all a little downhill/uphill from here. Fasten your emotionally driven seatbelts.

* * *

For some reason, like Damon's, neither Stefan's blood nor Caroline's does any good. Her body won't accept it. They all have their theories as to why but it seemed too soon to speak openly on any of them.

She goes back into surgery again that night and both the corridor outside her room and the visitors waiting area are so full that there aren't enough chairs or floor room for everyone to sit or sleep across.

Damon keeps still, the palms of his hands stuffed against his eyes, sitting by the door of her room while Stefan doesn't stop pacing and nobody seems brave enough, save his own brother, to ask him if he wanted to sit.

"Mr Salvatore?"

Both brothers lift their heads and look towards the nurse, standing apprehensively with her hands in her pockets. She flicks her eyes between both boys but rests them eventually on Stefan.

"She's out of surgery but she's heavily sedated, they won't know how successful the procedure went until she wakes up."

Stefan pushes himself off the wall and steps closer towards her, "But it was a success though, she's okay, she's breathing?"

The nurse smiles and Stefan suddenly feels the floor, solid and steady below his feet.

"She's breathing."

* * *

She wakes at 1 am, the tubes in her mouth making her gag and hysterical for air and while Stefan clutches her head, never leaving her eyes, he repeats it over and over and over again, for the both of them, _breathe Elena, breathe._

They end up sedating her again, she can't stop crying after taking the tube out of her throat and quietly, once they had left, once he had pulled the curtains shut, made sure she was still breathing for what felt like the 100th time, he shuts the door of the bathroom and cries, hunched against the toilet seat.

Losing her, the possibility of it felt like that sharp tear, deep in his chest, one he could feel the degrees of every time he moved.

He eventually cleans himself up and crawls right into the hospital bed against her, being careful of the cords and tubes overpowering the amount of free skin he could easily touch. He falls asleep at her back, wedged between her teddy bear and the bars of the bed.

It's like this, early in the morning hours when she finally and gently awakes.

Her eyes crease open and it's a struggle at first to focus, to get that feeling to stick. She feels groggy and a little stiff but the drugs they've been feeding her with have done their job and she's unable to feel the broken ribs, broken leg, and sprained wrist.

She meets a familiar set of eyes out of the light darkness of the room and they stare and don't speak for what feels like longer than they should.

"Hi." He finally mumbles because as nice as it is seeing it for himself, that she was alive, alert, whole, he needs to hear her voice again.

She flicks her eyes away from him for a moment and he watches as she figures it out for herself, getting her bearings, feeling just lightly the body behind her, until focusing them back on him.

"Hi."

Her voice was croaky and still thick with sleep but the softness of it reverberates in his ears.

"Such a little attention seeker." It's a weak attempt but it's all he can manage but she turns her lips, in what he thinks might be a smile, and that's good enough.

"I killed Katherine." She suddenly says, loudly.

It's immediate, the stillness of his heart, the way he can see her face ghosting across his eyes but it's gone just as suddenly.

"I know."

"I'm sorry, Damon."

"You're drugged up and not thinking clearly, Elena because you're not sorry and you shouldn't be. She wanted you dead, there was no choice."

The _for me_ goes unspoken but she hears it like it has been and can't find a thing to say to him as he gets up and heads towards the door.

"Oh and would you tell him to stop crying already, you haven't died." He winks at her, his body almost turned but it's the catch of her eye, that small smile that gets him to keep staring at her, waiting for her to speak.

"Yet." She says quietly.

He doesn't even control the way his face falls, it just does. But he leaves, drives his feet out of the room and walks as quickly as he can before he falls completely too.

She doesn't want to wake him so she settles on inching her body as far back as she can get it and that alone seeps so much of her energy that she falls asleep with her butt practically pressed up against his knee. But it's enough.

He's awake when the on call night nurse delivers her medication 5 hours later, sitting up in the arm chair going over her chart again. When they need to roll her over to stick a needle the size of his arm into her back he loses all feeling below his shoulders and has to turn away, looking out the window for a minute.

He grits his teeth, breathes the ache down in order to do it, his arms around her stomach, bracing her so that she doesn't have to turn completely over.

"Stefan." She whimpers just as the needle's penetrating her skin and he almost lets her go, leaning down to whisper in her ear.

"It's okay Elena, you're okay, I've got you."

But she moans and it catches in her throat and he can hear her crying before the tears come.

"It's okay, it's okay." He repeats as he and the nurse both roll her back onto her back. She settles at the sight of him and the nurse disappears so he can climb back into the bed.

"You're okay." He repeats, scooping her hair away from her shoulders.

She closes her eyes and leans against him and doesn't say anything for a long time. When she does, shifting back, looking at him properly, clearly for the first time since the accident, there are tears rolling down her cheeks.

"I'm so sorry."

He shakes his head, the best he can, his chin quivering and drops it into her hand, kissing her palm.

"For doing that to you but Stefa…we should…we should talk, decide what would happen if-"

"If what?" He cries, pulling as far back as the bed will allow him, glaring at her through his tears, "If you were to die, should I pull the plug, are we really going to have this conversation right now?" He climbs off the bed and heads for the back wall, one hand cupped to his neck.

"Stefan…don't, please." She tries, unable to lift her back off the pillows that were supporting her, unable to get to him.

"I just got you back from another surgery, a surgery that required for your brain to be cut open and now you wanna talk to me about what we should do if you were to die? Jesus, Elena." He spits, turning back around.

"There are options." She tries calmly but he's shaking his head and laughing bitterly though she can tell it's only because he's trying not to cry.

"Stefan…" She whispers.

"I almost lost you." He replies, gripping to the end bars of the bed, staring at her; the floor didn't feel so solid any more.

"Options." She repeats and tilts her head up, "Letting me die. Turning me. Options."

He looks like he's about to say something but just hangs his head, gathering his thoughts for a moment because anything he does say right now, whether he means it or not, could be permanent, he knows. Words he can't take back.

"Turning you." He lets out and he's widening his eyes the second after it's left his mouth because that he definitely couldn't take back; it's the only thing he wants to.

Elena blinks slowly but wriggles one finger, gesturing towards him. It takes him a second but he eventually moves, sitting on the edge of her bed and her feet find their way into his hands.

"We've never talked about this." He says softly, his voice husky and she flicks her foot, the one he's rubbing to get him to look over at her.

"_This_ has never happened before." She says when he's staring at her. There's an ache in her throat at the sight of his face because he wasn't angry or hurt anymore, he was just sad; it was woven into every detail, line of his face. It broke her heart.

"Come here." She whispers and he crawls over, burying his face into her neck; he's crying before he gets there and she can feel his warm tears sliding down her skin.

"I'm alive." She says quietly and his back shakes as she kisses his forehead and closes her eyes, "That is all that matters."

* * *

She goes into cardiac arrest sometime near five in the morning, without even the slightest warning and he's clutching his face, desperately pleading at the onslaught of nurses and Doctors now in her room, her room that was 5 seconds ago, still and quiet, to do _something._

They wheel her out while he stuffs himself into the small bathroom again, sobbing, biting on his fist to smother the noises he was making. He goes through scenarios in his head only because it's impossible to think of anything else. That he didn't get to say goodbye, that they still had such long life to live together, so many things to do, _together_. She wasn't even 18 year olds yet; she hadn't seen the world, she couldn't be taken away from that, from him.

It takes 2 and half hours to get any news to relay back to Jeremy and when he does get something, it's just a single nurse, folding down her face mask below her chin. Stefan steps back away from her, down the corridor clutching his face because he couldn't handle hearing it, couldn't survive hearing it but the words she whispers to him are like 4 steps, set up for him to climb.

"She's still in surgery."

He sways on the spot just as she's turning back around and his head hits the wall closest to him for his body to sag against.

"Hang on baby, please, please hang on." He whispers to nobody other than himself; to her.

* * *

A/N: I'll try my hardest to get another update before the end of this week but life has been a little overwhelming lately.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Final chapter of this series for you lovely people. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it:

* * *

"Stefan Salvatore?"

From where he's been sitting and half trying but mostly failing to sleep for the past 4 hours, Stefan lifts his head. He rises off the chair immediately when he notices the Doctor standing just shy behind the nurse.

"What is it?" Stefan asks quickly, trying to gauge the expression on their faces, knowing how this worked. Their job was to poker play it; give absolutely nothing away that couldn't be said through words. Faces weren't dangerous though, words were.

"We've managed to get her into a stable condition but she's lost a lot of blood, she's going to need transfusions now I've…"

"I can give her blood, I'm a match."

Both the nurse and Doctor chance to catch one another's eye before staring back at Stefan.

"Right now, let's do it now." Stefan says, stepping forward. The nurse holds up one hand though, now smiling.

"It's okay Mr Salvatore, we'll arrange everything. You just need to wait here."

She turns quickly and leaves, leaving the Doctor still standing there, watching him,

"Mr Salvatore you'll have to understand the implications that have happened here, giving her the transfusions doesn't guarantee that'll her condition will be consistent from here on out, you'll need to prepare yourself."

Stefan lets out a scoff and crosses his arms over his chest, looking down to the floor. He was struggling between trying hard not to fall right over; or to punch the guy in the face.

"Dr Watson have you ever been in love?" He asks, looking back up.

Dr Watson, taken aback, stutters, usually so precise with his wording.

"I will never be prepared for losing her, neither will her brother or her friends. We're both fighting this, her and me, together, we're prepared for _that_ and that alone." Stefan turns away and sinks back down into the chair, letting his head fall into his hands. It's quiet for a moment but he hears the footsteps, moving to turn out of the room, stop suddenly.

"I wasn't prepared for losing my wife to cancer, Mr Salvatore and I wasn't prepared for the days afterwards, listening to her speak on our answering machine just to hear her voice. I'm not telling you to give up, I'm asking you to be ready for when it's not longer your choice to do so."

He walks out of the room, shutting the door and Stefan slips down off the chair and lies against the ground, wondering how impossible it was that the earth wasn't splitting.

* * *

Nobody can find Damon when they eventually roll her out of ICU and back down into her room. But Stefan takes it upon himself to search, he always knew where to look anyway and it gave Jeremy time alone to be with Elena.

It's impossible to pin point his voice out of the hundreds in the hospital so he starts by floor. He almost skips the maternity ward completely but stops, catching the black jacket out of the corner of his eye as he rushed out of the elevator.

He's hunched over, sitting in one chair amongst a sea of them in the visitor's area. It's empty, all but the two of them and the receptionist at the very end, tucked behind a boxed desk.

"What are you doing here, Damon?"

He can hear, like his brother can, the sound of babies crying out into the air for the first time, of fathers and mothers overcome with joy. It's both horrifying and beautiful at the same time.

"What if she dies?" Damon asks quietly.

Stefan slowly walks past the line of chairs, walking through them to sit down just behind his brother so they weren't facing one another. Though he wishes that they were for this, it's easier that they're not.

"Why are you asking me this, Damon?" He asks and watches as Damon shakes his head a little.

"I know you, I know you don't think that I do, Stefan but I do. Better than anyone, almost. You're my brother and you love her, you love her more than you ever loved Katherine, more than you ever loved me-"

"Different," Stefan cuts in quickly, lifting his head higher, "It's a different love."

"Regardless." Damon shrugs.

Stefan thinks for a moment about what to say, about the words he needs to use in order to relieve his brother, in order to somehow make him see even though Stefan couldn't really see himself.

It's the truth though, what comes most quickly to mind. To tell his brother the truth.

"I won't leave you."

Damon lifts his head, barely turning it back, "But you'll want too, just to not feel her absence anymore, to not have to keep waking up everyday without her, to not have to live."

Stefan rises from his chair, no longer managing the sounds that were blaring in his ear. He had to get back to Elena but he stops just as he's reached the end of the row, turning his head back to see that Damon was already looking at him, "Yes I'll want too, of course I'll want too but I won't. You're _here_, Damon, you're my brother and you're here."

He leaves, feeling the tears down his brother's cheeks like they were falling on his.

* * *

She loses consciousness when he's walking back to the room and they're paddling her; with all three of them, Jeremy, Bonnie and Caroline, in tears standing just outside the door just as he's coming around the corner.

"What happened?" He asks, pushing past them to get through but a Nurse reaches over to grab him just as an orderly yells out, "_Start it up again!."_

"Please Mr Salvatore, you'll have to wait outside."

Stefan pushes against her, frantically trying to find Elena's face amongst a sea of white and blue uniforms, "I'm not leaving her."

Whether she knows it's not an equal fight or because she has more important things to attend to, she drops her arms and lets him by.

They shock her again but the monitor continues to flat line and Stefan finally catches her face, pale against the pillow and no longer feels his hear beating, his hands connected to his body or his feet on the floor.

"We're not getting any response, Dr, try another round?"

Stefan doesn't take his eyes off Elena and he hears, only distantly the order of another round to be administrated. He thinks, as they charge the paddles up, of what he had told Damon only seconds ago; what he had promised.

"We've got a pulse, we've got a pulse, it's faint but it's there."

Stefan's eyes roll to the back of his head and he lets air rush back into his lungs, suddenly feeling faint as the room starts becoming a little emptier; the crash cart being wheeled out.

"Mr Salvatore?"

Dr Watson is staring at him with eyes that are filled with something Stefan only reads as remorse. He doesn't think he'll able to bear it, hearing what he knows he's about to be told.

"Let me be with her without the constraints of knowing it might be the last time…okay? Just…let me be with here." Stefan whispers, tearing his eyes away from her to his. Dr Watson looks at him for a moment but nods gently and gestures to the nurses to leave.

The door shuts, leaving the room eerily quiet and it takes him a full minute to move from where he's standing, tucked away in the corner.

He pulls a chair over to the bed and takes her arm, weaving his fingers through hers, kissing the bend of her elbow as he rests his head there.

"Why…why are you crying?" A voice mumbles and he jolts his head up, reaching over to clutch her face.

"Hey, hey baby, try not to speak too much, okay." He whispers gently, fumbling over a smile and his tears.

She groans but manages to nudge her nose into his palm, "My…head…hurts."

Stefan brushes hair away from her face, rubbing his thumbs slowly over her temples, "You went into cardiac arrest and they had to operate again, they needed to give you blood because of how much you had lost."

She flicks her eyes around the room, suddenly looking nervous but settles them back on him, "Your blood?" She asks quietly.

He smiles and kisses her forehead again, "My blood." He sinks back down into the chair, reaching for her hand again. She doesn't say anything but moves her fingers over his palm.

"It's not going to work." She suddenly says.

It's like she's just screamed at him, the air practically being knocked right out of his chest as he sits up further in his chair.

"What do you mean, you're stable, it's going to be okay, you're going to be okay, Elena." He quickly says, panic flooding him.

But she closes her eyes and turns her head against the pillow, letting her fingers slide through his and presses out the gaps between their hands.

"Don't do this to me, okay? You are not going to give up on me."

Elena opens her eyes, a tear slipping down her cheek and into the blankets.

"You need to let me go, Stefan." She whispers and he glares and drops her hand, standing from the chair he kicks away from the bed. She couldn't be doing this to him, she couldn't.

"Stefan…" She tries quietly

His breathing was coming out in rough clumps and he turns back around, stopping mid-pace to look at her desperately, "How could you do this to me?"

She shakes her head and opens her mouth to say something but hesitates before closing it, it was getting harder and harder to move her arms, her toes and more than anything else, the feeling was calming and not terrifying.

"What am I supposed to do now?" He asks and looks away out the window, tears run down his cheeks and he wipes them away with the back of his hand.

"What am I…what am I supposed to do now?" He breaks out through his tears, turning around and staring at her.

"Stefan, come here."

Without resignation or thought he carries himself back over to the bed and lays his head down against the mattress as she put her hand against his neck, hushing him softly through his sobs.

"I love you, I do, I love you so much and you will live, you will live because that is what you are supposed to do. For me if not for anything else." She whispers against his hair, closing her eyes again, her hand dropping back to the bed.

He crawls into that bed and holds her, not hearing the way she suddenly stopped breathing, how the heartbeat monitor flat lined again; the noise ringing around the room. Nobody comes in and nobody bothers them as she dies and he lies there, minutes later, gripping to her body, weeping into her hair in the quiet darkness.

But Jeremy walks in and Stefan, somehow, manages to stand, every single last inch of him, piece, numb. Numb to Jeremy's sobbing, numb to everything but the need to get as far away as he could, to keep moving for as long as he could.

"Stefan, Stefan…_Stefan _come back!"

He's against the wall, pressing his face against it and unable to walk any further when Jeremy's voice along with a much softer hum that Stefan doesn't recognize, comes into range.

"You have to come back, you have to come back." Jeremy repeats as Stefan begins to step slowly back down the hall. He doesn't know if he can see it again, her body, he really doesn't but he's walking through the doorway and coming into the room because that sound, that noise that was merged in with Jeremy's, suddenly becomes clear. Blindingly clear.

Elena was gasping violently, her back arching on the bed and Stefan rushes over, throwing out his arms to hold her down. He's crying and laughing and he doesn't honestly know how he's heart's still beating after the plethora of emotions he's just experienced in the past 10 minutes.

"What's happening? Should I get a Doctor?" Jeremy splutters, standing at the end of the bed.

Stefan moves his arms away from her body and instead clutches for her face, her body settling. Her eyes fly open and Stefan's elbows almost give way, "Elena," He gasps as she spun her eyes reflectively all over the room.

"Stefan, what is going on?" Jeremy asks loudly, "What happened to her?"

And Stefan rests his forehead to hers, his heartbeat flying, as she focused her eyes on his face.

"I died." She whispers with a small smile, "That's what happened to me."

* * *

A/N: …yeah, rather abrupt ending but she's turned! And just a minor side note, Stefan gave her his blood for the transfusions with no underlining intentions of doing it to turn her, it was a surprise for them both.


End file.
